


but that's a feeling i can never show

by Official_Biscuit_Moron



Category: Gintama
Genre: Angst, Falling In Love, Gender Issues, Non-Binary Yagyuu Kyuubei, Other, Pining, Repression, Yagyuu Arc, mentioned: tae's father & shinpachi & obi hajime
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25208602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Official_Biscuit_Moron/pseuds/Official_Biscuit_Moron
Summary: Kyuu-chan is braver than she will ever be.
Relationships: Shimura Tae/Yagyuu Kyuubei
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	but that's a feeling i can never show

**Author's Note:**

> hi, i wanted to write about tae's suppression & conflicted feelings, because she is a repressing kinda gal, and i love her and she makes me sad. this isn't a very happy fic, though the end is a little more hopeful. this is her trying to deal with things by stifling them, and trying to make sense of the way she feels about kyuubei.
> 
> warning for internalized homophobia (tae isn't ashamed of her love for kyuubei, but she worries about kyuu being hurt because of their feelings/leading kyuubei on & hurting them herself), tae using he/him pronouns & 'man' to describe kyuubei in the part where they're children and during the beginning of the yagyuu arc, & a non-explicit, 1-line mention of a non-consensual kiss (at the beginning of the yagyuu arc)
> 
> if i handled something poorly/could improve upon something/etc., i'd be grateful for any constructive criticism!

Kyuu-chan is braver than she will ever be.

Kyuu-chan is braver, but he’s also stupider. Tae curses him, curses his bravery, curses his stupidity, curses his hair, splayed out on the dojo floor, a spiderweb of cracks in the wood, his bloody eye, his trembling hands. Kyuu-chan’s voice is breaking and quiet and tentative as he calls out to her, and he’s crying and Tae _curses_ him, curses herself for letting this happen, drops to her knees, takes his hand into hers, and smiles through her tears.

She looks at Kyuu-chan more often than she’d admit. (She admits it to her father, after months of turmoil, after turning sleeplessly in bed night after night and wondering why she’s broken, why she’s mad, why this world of men tells her she is even though she _knows_ she isn’t. She wants to scream until her throat is chafed and sore that she is not broken and she is not mad, she is gay and in _love,_ scream until her throat is bleeding as much as her heart is, but she can’t let herself do that. She is a carefully contained powder-keg, with both hands pressed flush against the lid, and must remain so. She can’t let herself do that, so she occupies her throat with the cold sake she put in front of his grave, instead, wondering why his stony silence doesn't feel as comforting as it usually does.) Almost every time, Kyuu-chan is looking back, and Tae can’t help but think again, again, how much braver Kyuu-chan is than her, because there is blatant love and open adoration plastered all over that face, in that kind, honest gaze, for everyone, for the whole world to see, and Tae can’t help but think how stupid Kyuu-chan is, too, to look at her like that.

When Kyuu-chan kisses her, he kisses her on the mouth; she’s not ready for it, and she doesn’t want it. She goes away with him, like she wondered dreamily about when she was a child, but she doesn’t want it. She clenches her teeth (both hands aren’t enough anymore; Tae adds her feet and her legs, her stomach and her chest, and then her whole body is occupied, keeping the keg closed, pinching the fuse with smoldering fingers) and smiles through her tears till her jaw is stiff and aching, and finds that she wants to go back to the sweet, soft time of her life when she was just a girl with a father and two brothers and a best friend.

She wants _Kyuu-chan_ , not this man.

But Tae looks at this man, this woman, and sees Yagyuu Kyuubei, stoic and conflicted, desperate, in love. She looks again, closer, deeper, and sees, from years and years ago and from right now, Kyuu-chan, in pain, Kyuu-chan, calling out to her, Kyuu-chan, trying to protect her, and despite everything, after all this time, she wants both. She wants Kyuu-chan to be whole again. And, adds Tae’s brave, stupid heart, she wants to be by his side, every step of the way.

(His side? Hers? Tae doesn't know, right now, because she hasn't had enough time to ask, because she and Kyuu-chan haven't spoken in years and years, and they aren't speaking properly right now, and nothing is going the way she dreamed it. She is hurting and Kyuu-chan is hurting and Shin-chan scoffs and scowls and her father and her other brother aren't here anymore so they don’t do anything at all.)

Tae can feel that she’s about to cry, and, for the first time in over a decade, she can't stop herself. Everything is raw and ripped open and fresh; when it comes, her combustion is uncontrolled but quiet, a TV detonation, dense billows of smoke devouring the air on mute. She is standing, shaking, with her head in her hands while the people she loves most in the world tear each other to bits. Standing still and crying while her best friend sends her brother through a wall. Her brother knocks her best friend to the ground. They clash swords (wooden, stiff, unlearned familiarity, standing, shaking, sobbing), spit insults. They're fighting, about her. This isn't the way she dreamed it. 

Maybe her dream is just a dream. Maybe they’ve all grown up and they’re all different now, and it never could have worked. Maybe Tae is far too flammable for Kyuu-chan’s flame to flare so close. Maybe they would be a controlled explosion, devastating only each other, but Tae can’t cause Kyuu-chan any more pain. She can’t. She picks up the wreckage, the gunpowder and wood and flames, but she can’t quite bring herself to tuck it neatly away, either; as much as she hates it, Tae cannot bear another moment of holding it all together. 

(Besides, the gunpowder doesn’t look so gruesome when it’s gently dusting the ground like that, dispersed and harmless. The wood doesn’t seem all that restraining when it’s strewn around in the dirt; it’s almost pitiable, foolish in its rigidity. The flames, Tae thinks, just feel warm.)

The only thing that Tae knows is true is Kyuu-chan’s head on her lap and Kyuu-chan’s breaking and quiet and tentative voice and Kyuu-chan’s arms thrown around her. Kyuu-chan, her precious friend, her friend who is not a man or a woman but at once both and neither. Kyuu-chan, who doesn’t belong to such confining words. Tae wants and wants and wants, she wants until her heart is bleeding, but doesn’t let herself have, because she _has_ Kyuu-chan, so devotedly and unconditionally, so much it scares her. She has Kyuu-chan; but does Kyuu-chan have her? She doesn’t know. She wants, with every fiber of her being, but she doesn’t know. (Tae wonders, though. She wonders if maybe it's not so bad to be stupid, sometimes. If maybe it was never bad at all.)

How brave Kyuu-chan is. How stupid, to have fallen in love with someone like her.

How brave she is. How stupid, to have fallen in love too.

**Author's Note:**

> title is from the heart-breakingly lovely song jesus christ 2005 god bless america by the 1975 (feat. phoebe bridgers). it's sad, gay, and very pretty.
> 
> (hi. petition to support blm: http://chng.it/Nf6c8BxK7t)


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